


Pockets of silence

by raiyana



Series: The Reader Inserts [8]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Tumblr: ImaginexHobbit, carving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 03:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11728140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiyana/pseuds/raiyana
Summary: Imagine Bifur showing you how to whittle and make carvingsaka Bifur is epic and more people should love him.





	Pockets of silence

His fingers held the knife with utter surety. No cut was made, no sliver of wood pared away without his absolute control. It was mesmerizing to see such rough hands create such fine objects. Careful, deliberate, the blade went into the wood at an angle, carved away what its master did not find pleasing and left behind smoothness that suddenly became a feathered bird’s body or the delicate petals of a dew-dotted bloom. The Dwarf was the most silent of the bunch, the one who did not speak in words the others understood, a long-lost dialect of their ancient language; so ancient that Bifur was the only one who spoke it these days.

You thought it must be lonely, but you did not dare comment to that effect. Bifur made his disadvantage work for him; you had seen the way those hands would flutter, making their owner understood by those of his kin who shared the language. The Dwarf had promised – with his cousin as an intermediary – that he would teach the you the art of carving figurines from wood.

That had been at the beginning of your journey, on a night of high spirits where you had remarked that you’d love to be able to make such toys. You had since regretted asking. Not because Bifur was an unkind teacher, even if you could only practice by the last light of day or the flickering of the evening fire, but because you were simply not getting it. You found it difficult to move the small blade you had been given, to make the precise moves required to not cut off too much. Bifur’s first lesson had been a long hour of the danger of ‘too much’. You had seen wondrous birds take shape between his hands, only to end up missing a wing because Bifur deliberately cut off ‘too much’ in demonstration. It had been surprisingly sad to see the one-winged wonders consigned to the fire.

In your second lesson, Bifur was attempting to teach you how to _see_ the piece of wood. He was surprisingly skilled at drawing, you realised, staring at the fish Bifur had drawn, borrowing a piece of paper from Ori. A natural knot in the wood becoming an eye, the resultant curves making for swift scales along the body. Saying something that his gestures made mean “making many will teach” in your mind, Bifur pointed to his eyes, to the wood, and the drawing, and you could only watch in stupefaction as the fish took shape exactly as Bifur had drawn it.

 

 

Now, you were sitting in a dark corner while the Laketowners partied around you, feeling stupidly proud of the small deer you had carved, modelled after the white one Thorin had shot at in the forest. For the first time, you were satisfied with a carving you had made, even if it wasn’t as elaborate as the ones Bifur routinely turned out, leaving them behind when you moved on in the morning, like a trail probably leading all the way home to Ered Luin.

 

Finding Bifur was easy. There was always a small pocket of silence surrounding him, like a one-dwarf island on a small lake. You shook your head at your fanciful imagination. Perhaps you had had more of the swill the Lakemen called beer than you ought?

Poking his shoulder to get his attention – Bifur might be a pocket of silence, but that did not make the party any less raucous behind you – you handed him the small deer. He stared up at you, smiling proudly. Suddenly, that smile was worth every nick and scraped knuckle, every half-finished attempt you had thrown on the fire.

Bifur tried handing the figurine back, but you shook your head, gesturing to him. You wanted him to have it, to keep it, perhaps even to treasure it, as you had treasured the nights he had sat beside you, an endless well of patience as he taught you how to move the blade. He smiled again, saying something surprisingly soft in words you did not understand. When he kissed your hand, pressing his lips against your palm, you gasped in surprise.

A fierce blush stained your cheeks for the rest of the night, though you waved off any inquiries as to its origin. Instead, you watched Bifur covertly, as he sat in his pocket of silence and studied your deer in the light of a small candle.


End file.
